she’s been getting stronger—to the point where she has a few cartel bosses in her pocket. That situation at Dominic’s was about showing me her reach, to let me know that she can get to me any time she wants. The only reason I’m not dead already is because she can’t do it. Rene won’t allow it, plus she kinda needs me.”
Tuesday’s mind was taking her in the wrong direction. “What the fuck she need you for?”
He explained. “Since forever, the Rodriguez family controlled the border towns—that’s where most of the contraband is being smuggled into the country. Lately the feds been crackin’ down and the pipeline is getting choked off. Reina and her friends have been taking some big losses this year.”
Tuesday remembered the news story from the previous night and was able to connect the dots. “And you just happen to have a big ass shipping company. They want to use Abel to get their dope into the country.”
“And to get their money back out to the cartels.”
Marcus maneuvered the Rolls Royce around a slow-moving Lincoln then took a hand off the wheel to rub Tuesday’s thigh. However, as the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place for her, she got so mad that she pushed it away.
She glared at him. “You sonofabitch! That’s what this this fuckin’ meeting is all about. They gone ask and you gone say no.”
She gasped. “And when you do, they gone kill you!”
Chapter Ten
Learning that Marcus was going to be assassinated at this meeting wasn’t what pissed Tuesday off the most. The anger that shifted her eye color came when she realized that he had known this entire time.
She thought back on how he had been lately: pensive, reclusive. It explained why he was dodging his usual responsibilities to spend so much time with their daughters. He had been living like a man who knew he was on borrowed time.
It also shed light on his ravenous sexual appetite. Over the past month Marcus had been gorging himself on Tuesday the way a condemned man would do a last meal.
She wanted to slap him. “How long did you know?”
He said, “It don’t matter.”
“What the fuck you mean it don’t matter!” she spat. “You just been goin’ through the day-to-day with me and the girls, the whole time knowin’ you got this hanging over you. How could you not tell me? I’m not just some bitch you fuckin’ Marcus. I’m yo’ wife. We got a family.”
He snapped back at her. “Don’t gimme that bullshit cause we both know you been flaky as hell lately. While you been out turnin’ up wit’ your girlfriend, I been the one at home holding down our family and dealing with this.”
That was a deep cut which immediately put tears in her eyes. “You wrong for that Marcus. You know good and damn well if I would’da known—” The rest was choked off by sobs. Tuesday turned away from him and began to weep into her palms.
Marcus dragged a hand across his face knowing it was petty of him to run a guilt-trip. In truth, there had been plenty of chances to tell Tuesday; he had chosen to bear this burden alone. It had nothing to do with the time she was spending with Shaun.
He felt like shit. “Bae, c’mon.”
When he reached for her she slapped his hand away. “Pull over. Let me out.”
“Look baby, I’m sorry for what I said but we not about to do this soap opera shit. You not about to jump out this car downtown at twelve o’clock at night. It’s not happenin’.”
That was a bluff and she was happy not to get called on it. She wiped her face then sat in the passenger seat, arms folded, pouting like a child.
For a while the drive was just as silent as when they first left Dominic’s. Only this time the Rolls was not filled with a mutually reflective silence. This was a tension-filled bubble heavy with unvoiced emotions.
Tuesday habitually checked her mirror to find the dark SUV matching their turns. What the night had first presented as black, artificial light revealed to be a deep burgundy Tahoe. It and a second SUV that Tuesday couldn’t make out kept a distance of about four car lengths.
At some point she didn’t even realize, she and Marcus’s hands had found each other and laced their fingers. At some point she didn’t even realize, Tuesday stopped being mad at him. She was more frightened than anything else.
“So what’cho gone do?”
“I’m going to the meeting,” he said flatly.
“Well what’cho gone say when they ask about using Abel?”
Marcus didn’t blink. “I’m basically gone tell ’em to kiss my ass.”
Tuesday was waiting for him to reveal some plan he had been working on in secret. When he didn’t share anything more, Tuesday couldn’t believe it. “So you’re basically about to walk in there, knowing full well what’s waiting for you?”
“If I don’t go to them, they’re just gonna come to me.”
She said, “Just punch it. We could beat them home and get the girls. We could lay low until we figure this out. Hide out for a while on the same island you bought when you needed to dodge the feds.”
Marcus shook his head. “That was a different situation. The indictment was only about me. Running puts a target on all our backs.
“And trust me, Reina already got somebody scoping out the house. The clowns following us are just for psychology, a visual message not to try anything. If I mash this gas and try to get light, somebody’ll be kicking in our front door before we cut two corners.”
“Then fuck runnin’!” she shouted. “We’ll go to war. How ’bout that? If she want it wit’ us, if she want it wit’ Sebastian Caine, we’ll give that bitch what she askin’ for.”
Marcus just stared at Tuesday for a minute with a look that was a combination of puzzlement and pity. “Tuesday, who in the fuck do you think I am?”
She couldn’t answer because she didn’t know what to make of the question.
“I haven’t been that person for a very long time, and the truth is, the Sebastian Caine you believe in never really existed. Even when I was at my worst, I still didn’t do half the shit that got put on my name. Now you talkin’ bout going to war with not just La Guapa, but the other cartel bosses who’s backing her like it’s no problem? You’ve been living with me for three years; do you think I’ve been hiding an army of mercenaries in the basement? There ain’t no button in my office that makes the walls spin to reveal grenades and rocket launchers. Our tennis court ain’t got no supersonic jet hiding underneath it.
“I’m a family man; I own a business; I pay my taxes. I’m an ordinary dude, Tuesday. And I’m sorry if it fucks up the fantasy for you, but that’s all I’ve ever been.”
She sat there quietly for a moment, absorbing all that he said. Since she was young, that name Sebastian Caine had been infamous, while the man himself had remained a mystery. Rumors had put his hands into everything from casinos to nuclear weapons.
Even after years of being his woman, she had never been able to separate the man from the myth. Tuesday only realized then how much those stories had distorted her image of Marcus. This was a guy who had succeeded by being elusive and smart but there was nothing supernatural about him.
Her eyes grew misty again. “Tell me you’ve got somethin’ up your sleeve. Tell me you’re not just about to go in there and hand them yo’ head.”
He answered the question with his silence. He avoided her eyes, stared through the windshield as if some televised version of his future played out in the distance.
A sob exploded from her. “I can’t believe this! I can’t believe there ain’t